It's life, Captain, but not life as we know it.
-Spock

That quote could be changed to "It's Star Trek, Captain, but not Star Trek as we know it." This bloated mess of a film seems to take it's visual queues from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey instead of the television series it's based on. As a result the 90 minute story is ballooned to a 132 minute running time with most of the filler being that of a film that seems to be in awe of it's own visual effects.

The visuals are impressive however, but scenes like the introduction of the new Enterprise and later on it's passage within the space cloud are both pacing nightmares. While…

Almost ten years after the show had ended, Gene Roddenberry brought Star Trek fans more adventures in the form of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which would blow up the show's small screen scope into one worthy of the silver screen. The effects would be better, the ideas would be grander, and everything would be bigger.

Unfortunately this also means the film is boring as sin as Robert Wise tries to make what should simply be a nice little 90 minute film into a 2 hour film as he stuffs it all with 2001 esque shots of grandeur. The problem is that where 2001: A Space Odyssey had material to fill in with those long sequences of space that actually…

Time and time again I've considering introducing myself to the Star Trek galaxy, universe, whatever you call it, but I've always been distracted. With the impending release of the most awfully titled film in years Star Trek Into Darkness, I can no longer put the legendary franchise off. Truth be told, my pre-existing knowledge of what exactly a Star Trek movie entails is about as non-existent as Baz Luhrmann’s logic when adapting a novel.

So there I was sitting down to watch Robert Wise’s feature film continuation of the legendary series and within seconds I experienced something that I can only compare to the cathartic, renaissance in Stanley Kubrick’s otherworld masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. In all those early moments…

Somewhat unwittingly, I appear to have started watching all of the original Star Trek movies. I'd never seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture before, but decided to watch it last Wednesday prior to going to see the new JJ Abrams film, Star Trek Into Darkness. Every day since then, I've watched another Star Trek movie!

I've never really been a big fan of the original 1960's series. I mean, I've seen quite a bit of it and enjoyed aspects of the series, but I've always preferred The Next Generation. Something about how sleazy the series was whilst trying to promote equality never sat right with me. But, as a fantasy adventure series set in space, meeting weird alien species, with…

Having seen the first three episodes of The Original Series - the unaired pilot "The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and The Man-Trap" - I felt ready to embark onto the series first motion picture, before returning to the series in order to see "Space Seed" before Wrath of Khan. I was prepared for a slow film, even a flawed one, as I knew this was a 70's sci-fi film and not one that ventured high in the various ranking of the Star Trek-films, but I was also intrigued by the premise of something massive, something we had no idea what was, heading towards Earth, with the Enterprise on its way to solved the mystery and stop it…

This appears to be a first-time watch, I thought I had seen this before but remembered nothing at all.

Possibly the best of the original series, certainly the most straight-laced of the bunch. It has a hard sci-fi concept and, with the exception of some draggy over-indulgent special effects sequences, is notably tight in its storytelling. The cinematography is a cut above everything else that follows, unique of its time and place, one never repurposed by future Trek movies or any science fiction movie. Something about the Motion Picture feels hermetically sealed, pristine, its own entity.

All the complaints of Abrams diverting from the classic qualities of Trek have me confused now… what Trek exactly? The hard sci-fi of the…

It's easy to point out the problems with this movie, and those problems are legion. I'll be the first to admit that this movie is overly long and glacially paced. It's certainly not a movie that I watch often, nor one that I always watch without the use of the fast forward button. However, the movie does have some points to recommend it.

First of all, I think the movie is gorgeous. The effects are mostly spectacular, not just for the time in which the movie was created, but even for today. They hold up remarkably well. The sets look good, the actors look good, the costumes look good (this is the only original movie that doesn't use the more…

So I decided to give the older Star Trek movies a try. Knowing that Star Wars Episode 4 was released two years earlier, I expected something similar. I was very excited to try it, but it soon turned against me. It lacked the spark that the original Star Wars had.

The storyline is mediocre at best.. the ending is fine though, but still that doesn't make up the long and sometimes dreadful story throughout the movie. It seemed like they were just prolonging the movie with scenery shots (alternating with some shocked faces). I can understand that one likes the SciFi view of a spacecraft, but I don't like to watch 10 to 15 full minutes at the same damn…